Category Archives: Style

Bev Robinson, best known as Cindy Ray, was one of the first tattooed pinup girls of Australia. She spent most of her life working as a respected tattoo artist.
In the early 1960s, photographs of a heavily tattooed woman from Australia called Cindy Ray started appearing. She was blonde and beautiful with tattoos on her arms, chest, back and legs and soon became known as “the classy lassie with the tattooed chassis”.
She was talked into getting tattooed at 19, and despite having no examples of tattooed people in her family and being a farm worker, she got 4 tattoos on the first night. She still doesn’t know how she was convinced that she could make money touring the country as a tattooed model, but she did and that made her what she is today.

Françoise Madeleine Hardy found immediate success with her first song “Tous les garcons et les filles”. As a leading figure of the Ye-Ye movement (naive pop songs sung mostly by beautiful young women. The named is derived from “yeah-yeah” popularized by The Beatles), Hardy “found herself at the very forefront of the French music scene”, and became “France’s most exportable female singing star”, recording in various languages, appearing in several movies and touring throughout Europe. With her natural beauty and charm, Francoise began modeling as well – becoming a French fashion icon as well as pop star. As the Ye-Ye movement lost steam, Francoise changed her approach, singing ‘grown-up’ songs, working w/ songwriters like Leonard Cohan and Serge Gainsbourg. She would go on to record many more LPs, collaborating w/ Blur in 1994 and Malcolm McClaren as well as Iggy Pop. Her music has been used in a ton of movies – most recently Wes Anderson’s Moonlight Kingdom (The female lead (Suzy) calls The Ye-Ye Girls From Paris (1962) her “favorite record album”, and it is the only album she packs when preparing to run away from home). And DAMN! if she’s not still gorgeous at 70.

Pictured here are various Motorcycle Club jackets and patches. Everything on each jacket represents something to it’s owner and club; his standing, club politics, philosophy, chapter, etc. I have no idea if these MC’s still exist or anything about their history. All I know for sure is you better not wear one of these patches if you’re not part of the club (We learned this from 6 seasons of Sons of Anarchy). Apologies to all the MC’s unrepresented here.

Irish McCalla was not your typical 1950’s pin-up. Not the demure Betty Page type, Irish was big! Standing 5’10” and incredibly busty (37-24-38), Irish was hugely popular in the early 50’s, posing for pin-up king, Antonio Varga and appearing in tons of magazines. From 1955-58 she became “Sheena, Queen of the Jungle”, acting in the syndicated serialization of the same name for 26 episodes. She would play bit parts in TV and movies in the early sixties but called it quits by 1969 when she was diagnosed w/ a brain tumor. Over the years she would deal w/ 4 more tumors and eventually pass away in 2002 at the age of 73 from complications.

A story from her Sheena days goes that she did her own vine-swinging and tree-climbing with her pet chimp, Chim, until the day she misjudged a vine swing and crashed into a tree, smashing her knee and breaking an arm. After that, the producers did the only thing they could do (due to her size), they hired male stunt men, and dressed them in leopard skins and blond wigs.

John William Weller (Paul) – Born May 25 1956, Woking, Surrey England. Paul Weller first came into the public eye in 1976 with the formation of The Jam. Although The Jam emerged at the same time as other punk bands like The Clash and The Sex Pistols, The Jam were the odd band out, and being from just outside London rather than the city itself, they were never really part of the tightly-knit punk clique. Nonetheless, it was The Clash who became a leading supporter and took them along as the support act on their White Riot tour of 1977, sealing their fame. Weller would dissolve The Jam after 5 LPs to form the Curtis Mayfield inspired soul band – The Style Council, recording a couple of pretty great albums, closing shop in 1989. From 1991 on it’s been solo work for Paul, releasing critically well received albums every few years.

Now to the Hair. Sporting a good close-cropped punk haircut in the Jam’s early days, Paul quickly evolved to a sweet Mod bowl cut, to a back-combed young Roger Daltry, to a Rod Stewart Peacock with an occasional soul boy look for good measure. And then the current ‘Do’ that he’s rocked for the past 20 years. He calls it the ‘Weller Wig’. Why call it anything else? It’s indescribable. It’s his haircut. Oasis tried it, some of the guys in Blur gave it a shot for a bit. Arctic Monkeys and Miles Kane – yep. But no one wears it like the Modfather. May he never go bald.

Michael Alig and friend James St. James (along w/ Rupaul, Amanda Lepore, et al) were part of the late 80’searly 90’s New York personalities known as The Club Kids. The group was notable for their elaborate and outrageous costumes and rampant drug use.

Alig’s notoriety and influence grew, and at one point he was on the payrolls of several clubs owned by Peter Gatien for simply showing up with his entourage, since their behavior attracted customers. Alig and the Club Kids also began holding illegal “outlaw” parties in various public places, including a donut shop, a semi-truck trailer, and the NYC Subway. At the height of their cultural popularity, the Club Kids toured the United States and appeared on several talk shows, such as Geraldo, Phil Donahue and Joan Rivers (on Youtube and hilarious).

In 1996 Alig and his friend Robert “Freeze” Riggs murdered friend and drug dealer, Angel Melendez after an argument over a long-standing drug debt. Alig has claimed many times that he was so high that he hardly remembers the events. Yet he somehow managed to beat Angel to death with a hammer, leave him in his tub for a week then dismember him and throw his body in the Hudson river. Several months later, Melendez’s torso washed up. Alig was arrested, confessed and sentenced to 10-20 years. Alig was released after serving 17 years on May 5, 2014.

Check out Party Monster – the awful film starring Macauley Culkin, Seth Green and Marilyn Manson. Or the pretty good book, Disco Bloodbath by James St. JAmes.